Cindy Sherman's latest photography series isn't exhibited in a brick and mortar gallery or a renowned museum but in the pages of Harper's Bazaar magazine. In her latest work, Sherman explores the high fashion worlds of daily fashionistas and portrays them in her typical artist fashion: stepping into character to put herself front and center in portraits depicting someone other than herself. "Project Twirl" is a series of seven photographs created by Sherman for a special project dreamed up by Harper's Bazaar magazine. Cindy Sherman's photographs were published by Harper's Bazaar in its March 2016 issue as part of the article "Cindy Sherman: Street-Style Star" written by Laura Brown.
For the "Project Twirl" series, Sherman created photographs satirizing fashion show attendees by using daily fashionistas who treat life as opportunities for highly stylized photo-ops.
"I just loved the description of these people," Sherman told Harper's, "These characters who go to the fashion shows—and twirl, as you talk about."
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"Project Twirl" photograph by Cindy Sherman appearing in Harper's Bazaar March 2016 issue. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.
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"Project Twirl" was attractive to Sherman as she enjoys attending fashion shows and is no stranger to combining her art with fashion, according to Harper's. Sherman has created commissions or taken part in campaigns for Comme des Garçons, Marc Jacobs, M.A.C. and brands including Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton. Finding herself in between art projects, Sherman embraced Harper's idea to satirically channel those who attend fashion shows while looking for some of the limelight for themselves, according to the magazine.
"I take on projects like this when I'm starting on a new body of work because it inspires me, gets the juices flowing," Sherman told Harper's.
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"Project Twirl" photograph by Cindy Sherman appearing in Harper's Bazaar March 2016 issue. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.
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To get Sherman started, Harper's writer Laura Brown gave Sherman a list of Instagram accounts of "street-style stars": people who take fashion and their photo ops as serious as if they were models in a fashion mag shoot and create selfies to prove it, according to the article. Sherman then began searching social media herself and created seven photographs depicting characters based on real people she discovered, reported the magazine.
“For a lot of the faces, I was inspired by real people I found online," Sherman told Harper's Bazaar. "I didn't want it to be obvious, though. I'd change the hair color, style, something. But they still look like they're somebody—rather than just me with makeup on."
Sherman continued, according to Harper's, "It was hard to capture the real twirling idea. I don't use flash, so it was a little slower. The times I tried to, it was all blurry. But I like limitations because they make you think of other ways of getting around that. Like the shadow in the Chanel image."
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"Project Twirl" photograph by Cindy Sherman appearing in Harper's Bazaar March 2016 issue. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.
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In addition to the Instagram assist, Harper's supplied Sherman with a series of "must-have looks" by celebrated fashion designers including Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs and J. W. Anderson, according to the magazine.
Taken as a whole, the series is a playful and fun poke at a subculture that is fab on a daily basis. They also seem to satire the fashion industry's street side photo shoots selected for chic realism. Just ask anyone who's spent time along Main Street in Sag Harbor where witnessing fashion shoots is nearly a weekly occurrence. Main Streets in Southampton and East Hampton and the beaches of The Hamptons are other spots where models with camera crews are frequently spotted making fashion photography.
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"Project Twirl" photograph by Cindy Sherman appearing in Harper's Bazaar March 2016 issue. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.
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Tying art and fashion together even tighter, Harper's Bazaar has issued five special editions of its March magazine so Sherman's series can take center stage. Cindy Sherman's original artworks appear on five limited print subscriber editions. Non-subscribers can purchase online as either a single edition selected at random for $5.99 or for complete set of five as a collector's set for $29.95 plus shipping, while supplies last. Click here for details.
"Project Twirl" photograph by Cindy Sherman appearing in Harper's Bazaar March 2016 issue. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.
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Cindy Sherman (American, 1954) is a conceptual and socially critical photographer who explores contemporary identity and its representation through images that feature Sherman as model cloaked in personas and guises. To make her images, Sherman takes on the roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, stylist and wardrobe director. Her guises have assumed the identities of hundreds of characters in tableau settings including clowns, screen sires, aging socialites, clergymen and female clichés depicted in 20th century pop culture.
Sherman's work has been exhibited internationally and is held by numerous public and private collections including the Parrish Art Museum where Sherman's photograph Lucille Ball, 1975, is currently on view in "Picturing Artists" exhibited in the museum's permanent collection galleries. In 2012, her work was the subject of a retrospective at MoMA featuring 170 photographs. Cindy Sherman is based in New York City and Sag Harbor in The Hamptons.
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"Project Twirl" photograph by Cindy Sherman appearing in Harper's Bazaar March 2016 issue. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.
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"Cindy Sherman: Street-Style Star" by Laura Brown published in the March 2016 issue of Harper's Bazaar. Click here to read.
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